Black dotwork mandala with scrollwork and leaves across the upper back, with a smaller fleur-de-lis tattoo above it on the spine.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mandala and fleur-de-lis on upper back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows the upper back of a person with a large circular mandala of radiating points, leaves and curling scrolls. A smaller fleur-de-lis sits above it, near the top of the spine. The shading is built from fine stippled dots and solid black linework on pale skin, with a blurred background and red straps at the edges.

Dotwork Geometric Back Mandala Fleur-de-lis Starburst Scrollwork Leaves

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the chart you left on the dresser has gone soft at the folds, so I have copied the star onto the back of the ledger instead, the way Father used to when the ink ran short. Every point of it is a bearing. The long spikes are the winds, the leaves between them are the coves you named after dogs, and the little scrolls are the eddies off Sallow Rock that you swore would drown the Mary Ann one day.

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Mrs Penhallow came in on Tuesday asking whether the lily at the top of the page meant anything or was only decoration. I told her it was north, the way the old cartographers set it, and that a harbour boy who forgot which way was home would find it there. She laughed and said nobody in Porthkennick forgets home, they just get stuck arguing about where it is.

On Monday the Mary Ann came in under a sky the colour of wet slate. I counted her lamps the way you showed me, one, two, three, and then I stopped counting because I saw the lily flag at the masthead, bent but whole. Nobody on the quay cheered. We stood with our hands in our pockets like fools until the first line went over.

The ledger is shut now and the star is drying on the sill. Come home at the spring tide and bring the real chart, and we will work out together which of these spokes you meant to go down.